As has been discussed, the timeframe for Blizzard's goals in WoW is a little weird. Assuming we do really get a two-raid-tier expansion, the expectation is that things will be accelerated. Combining that with a desire not to have similar content gaps to what we've had at the end of Mists (or, the lesser cases of Cataclysm and Wrath,) it really seems like the following expansion would have to come out very quickly - such that pretty much a year from now WoW's got to be Beta testing its next expansion, or at least ready to do so soon.
To many, including myself, it seems that announcing Queen of the Abyss, Sands of the Infinite, Legionfall, or whatever the next expansion will be as early as this upcoming Blizzcon (which is less than two months away,) would seem to be preposterous, taking away the thunder of Warlords right as it's about to come out.
I think there's a slight danger to releasing expansions too quickly. A typical player will hit the level cap pretty early in an expansion's life cycle, and from there, the game is largely about gearing up and progressing through tiers of content. You invest a lot of time in getting to the point where you're indisputably powerful. My DK can massacre Yaungol on the Timeless Isle (maybe not in the Ordon Sanctuary,) but that's only because I took a lot of time running through three tiers of raiding and the epic Legendary quests.
Expansions have to renew the gear climb to equalize the playing field between new and old players - that's a flat-out necessity of the game, and one that I'd never argue against. But what it does mean is that as badass as you might have been in Northrend, that doesn't really count for anything now. Again, that's fine, because if it still did, it would mean that my DK and Paladin would forever have a leg up on my Worgen Warrior. Still, it means that whatever character progress you make during a given expansion is really a temporary thing. Yes, our characters never get less powerful (unless you count the item squish, but since NPCs are getting equally nerfed, it comes out as a wash,) but what's super-powered at level 70 is tiny-insect-level weak at level 90.
What I'm getting at here is that, since character progress is somewhat temporary, at least in the context of the "current" content, it means that a player could feel less incentivized to try gearing up in a shorter expansion cycle.
This year of Siege of Orgrimmar isn't that great, but what it does mean is that my DK has been a total beast for about a year now (and he wasn't even that bad before, when he was going through tier 14 or ToT.)
One might worry that, if the expansions were to last half as long, you might simply shrug and wait until another gear reset with the new expansion, especially given that with only two raid tiers, you're that much closer in power as a fresh 100 to the raiders. That's perhaps an extreme hypothetical - after all, you'd still have a year in which to progress. And perhaps I'm making something out of nothing.
But what I think it does bring up is the idea of what WoW is. Is it a single game that came out in 2004, or is it several, the latest of which came out in 2012?
The fact is, no one really runs Ahn Qiraj anymore. That's not precisely true, given that plenty of people are free to go in there and mess things up for C'thun, but how often do you see 40-person raids of people at level 60 getting ready for their weekly AQ40 raid? That's the manner in which it was designed to be played, but it's not done that way.
Who in their right mind grinds Earthen Ring reputation these days? How many people do you see on the Molten Front? Or the Argent Tournament, or the Isle of Quel'danas? I'd bet there aren't a lot. The fact is that each expansion really puts us in a different context. I think that's part of the reason why nostalgia is such a huge thing in the WoW community. With most video games, if you really missed an earlier entry in a series, you could just pop that in and play it instead. But WoW's new expansions sort of obfuscate the old ones.
It's pretty rare that content is flat-out removed, of course. Dungeon revamps happen, yes, and no one can do Naxx-40 anymore. Cataclysm of course changed a lot of the existing zones (technically you can ride your mount through the canyons of Thousand Needles - you'll just be underwater in a SCUBA suit.) But even in the era of LFR, the fundamental fact of WoW is that it matters where the other players are (yes, those other people in your LFR group are actual people. Whether that's a reassuring thing or horrifying is up to you.) New expansions just naturally draw people to the next thing - and that's by design. But it does mean that you can't just pop the old Wrath of the Lich King cartridge into your SNES after blowing on it a bit and play that old game. For one thing, Wrath is not an SNES game, but more importantly, Wrath kind of exists and does not exist. The stuff from it is all still there, as far as I can recall, but it's never going to be "current" again.
So what does this have to do with announcing expansions? Blizzard could announce a new expansion for WoW at Blizzcon this year. Doing so would, I would guess, be detrimental to Warlords of Draenor as an expansion, when seen standing on its own. It would suggest that we would probably be spending most of our time at level 100 essentially passing the time until we could start making the climb to 110 or wherever we wind up.
But in the context of WoW as a whole, it could be good. If we get to see something of expansion 6 before we're even in Draenor, it will do a lot to allay any fears that we might be stuck in a Siege-type rut for a full year. Even if it took just as long from announcement to release as Warlords did, it would mean that we'd be getting something bright and shiny and new within only about a year. Expansions bring in subscribers and bring old ones back into the fold. Big gaps like these are some of the biggest issues for WoW (though I'd also say the wild swings in difficulty philosophy are similarly a problem.)
I can definitely say that, having played the Beta for a couple months now, I'm excited to see new stuff, but I also have to remind myself that the average player's experience of WoW is still Timeless Isle and Siege of Orgrimmar. Lest I sound like I'm underselling Warlords, let me be clear: Draenor is super cool. The landscape and questing is way more interesting than Pandaria, though I'm not decided on the characters there (I haven't seen enough of the eponymous Warlords to really get a feel for their respective personalities. At the moment the only one of them I really find all that interesting is Grommash himself, though I guess if there's only going to be one, it might as well be him - that said, even if Grommash is the final boss, so far I think Gul'dan's the main villain.)
Fundamentally, the question is this: Does Blizzard want to risk Draenor feeling like a pitstop on the way to other adventures, or do they want to risk players becoming bored with Draenor while they wait for something new? It's a delicate balance to maintain, but we'll find out soon enough.
Still, just for fun, it might not be a terrible idea to comb around for Blizzard trademark applications.
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